IRELAND
Gladys Ganiel
Marie Keenan: Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church – Book Review, Part 3: The Irish Model of “Perfect Celibate Clerical Masculinity”
by Gladys Ganiel on July 19, 2014
Today I continue a series reviewing some key insights from Marie Keenan’s important book, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power, and Organizational Culture (Oxford University Press, 2012).
I don’t think that the book has received as much attention as it should have, so I am focusing on four key areas, which I think deserve greater public debate:
1. The Dangers of Individualizing the Abuse Problem
2. Why the Catholic Church’s Response to Abuse should not be considered a “Cover-up”
3. The Irish Model for “Doing” Priesthood of “Perfect Celibate Clerical Masculinity” and its Consequences
4. The Complexity of the Abuse Problem and How it can be Addressed
Today, in part three, I focus on:
The Irish Model for “Doing” Priesthood of “Perfect Celibate Clerical Masculinity” and its Consequences
One of the unique, and valuable, aspects of Keenan’s research is that it involved in-depth interviews with clerics who had abused, providing insights not only into how the men described their decisions to abuse – but their experience of being priests prior to, during, and after the times they abused.
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